


hello my old heart

by theappleppielifestyle



Series: dreaming [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 08:24:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13430793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: Steve frowns. “Nat, what does this have to do with me?”As Tony’s busy turning over every scrap of information she’d told him about her soulmate, Natasha takes a very small breath and says, “It’s James. Bucky.”





	hello my old heart

When Tony wakes up nowadays, the first thing he does is reach out to his side.

Most of the time, the bed is empty apart from him. For a while Steve had tried staying in bed long enough for Tony to wake up and see him, but Tony’s sleep schedule is spotty at best and Steve gets bouncy if he doesn’t go for his morning run. Like a goddamned golden retriever.

So they’ve worked out a system. When Tony reaches over, his hand will usually grope around empty mattress for a while before it lands on a post-it. Sometimes it will land in a plate of fruit, which happens less often since Steve saw the stains left by Tony knocking a bunch of strawberries onto the bed.

Once, Tony rolled over and there was a single flower, a posy, lying on Steve’s pillow. It was the most romantic thing Tony has ever experienced in his whole fucking life.

It’s been eight months since Steve moved into Tony’s life for good, but some days Tony still can’t believe Steve is _here_. He’s never more than a phone call away- there have been chances to go on overseas missions, but Steve has turned them down. He doesn’t say so, but Tony knows it’s because he doesn’t want to be too far away from Tony, at least until the two of them feel more assured about each other’s continued presence.

They’re getting better at it. Really. Nowadays Tony barely needs to ask Jarvis to bring up a feed of Steve doing whatever he’s doing, just to prove to himself that yes, he is there and yes, Tony could go and see him if he wanted, or he could talk to him on his cell. Steve is here, not lost to him amongst his dreams or the decades. He’s right here with Tony.

When Tony reaches to the side of the bed- _Steve’s_ side of the bed, since they commandeered separate sides and have so far stuck to them-he doesn’t find anything. He rolls over, cracks open his bleary eyes so he doesn’t scatter sliced bananas over the sheets or something, and sees a yellow post it note.

Sometimes they’re romantic- _you’re gorgeous when you’re asleep_ or _I want to draw you with the sun coming in and slanting over your ribs_ , that kind of thing. Some are just check ins or saying that they should watch a particular movie, and some are simply: _Still here. Love you_.

Today it says, _I’ve been thinking of trying new kinds of bread for my toast._

Somehow it manages to be endearing as fuck. Tony feels himself grin as he sits up, stretches, and gets up to put the post-it note in the drawer with all the rest of them. He might have turned into a huge sap since Steve’s come into his life for real, but he’s certainly not complaining.

 

 

 

 

 

Steve comes into the kitchen while Tony is over by the coffeemaker considering Bruce’s brew.

“Hey,” Tony says when he catches Steve. He tilts his face up for a kiss when Steve walks over, then he holds the coffeemaker out to him. “What do you think?”

Steve looks into it. “Bruce?”

“Yep.”

“I’d say chance it,” Steve says. “It’d be a waste otherwise. Can’t be any worse than what you usually have.”

“Says you,” Tony says, but pours himself a cup anyway. Then he heads back to the kitchen table where he’d been in the middle of eating his bagel. “So new toast, huh?”

“Been thinking about it,” Steve says from the cupboards. He reaches up and brings down a bag, taking a loaf out of it that’s dark and filled with nuts.

Tony watches as Steve gets a knife from the knife holder. When he sees what Steve is about to chop the bread with, he makes an angry noise in his throat.

Steve pauses with the blade just above the bread. He looks back at Tony and raises his eyebrows.

Tony swallows his mouthful of cereal. “Seriously?”

“What?”

“Use a breadknife.”

Steve glances down at the knife. “This is fine.”

“Breadknives are literally for cutting bread. It’s their name. That isn’t-”

“It’ll cut just fine!”

“It’ll blunt the blade and fuck up the bread! It’s not even serrated-”

“It’s fine,” Steve repeats, and with that he starts cutting into the bread, grinning when Tony lets out another angry noise. “See? It’s fine.”

“It’s squishing the br- look, it’s squishing the bread!”

“Only a little bit,” Steve says, frustratingly casual as he continues to ruin what looks like a perfectly nice slice of bread with the wrong kind of knife. Then he tries pulling out the slice into its original shape, but it stays squished and tears slightly when Steve pulls too hard.

“Oops,” Steve says, but he still sounds unconcerned. He cuts another squished slice, then heads to the toaster and slots both pieces in before coming to sit next to Tony at the kitchen table.

He blinks innocently at Tony, who has been glaring at him and struggling against a smile since Steve tried straightening out the bread.

 _I am so goddamned glad I get to be frustrated with you about your wrong choice of breadcutting knife_ , Tony thinks.

“What kind of bread is it,” Tony says when it’s clear Steve isn’t going to give in and speak.

Steve’s mouth twitches and then straightens out again. “I’m not sure, I just picked out something that looked nice in the bakery. I’ll find out its name if I end up liking it. Morning.”

The last part is directed at Natasha, who walks in on the tail end of his sentence.

Tony eyes her. Something’s wrong- her expression is tight and blank, which can’t be good.

The last time he saw her like this was during movie night three months back when they were watching 1984 and the torturer was trying to get Winston to believe he was holding up five fingers instead of four. Tony had motioned at Clint, who had immediately cottoned on and asked if Natasha wanted to come with him to get more snacks. When Clint came back fifteen minutes later, it was alone and claiming that Natasha was tired and wanted to turn in early.

He can’t come right out and ask what’s wrong, so instead he sips his coffee. “Any plans today?”

She shakes her head. “I need to talk to Steve.”

Okay. Not what he was expecting. Tony looks over to Steve, who seems just as clueless but definitely more keyed in to the fact that Natasha isn’t doing great right now.

“You okay,” Steve asks, because he’s the kind of guy who can do that.

Natasha doesn’t answer. Her hands loosen and tighten into fists and her gaze flickers over to Tony. “It’s about my soulmate.”

Right, the one that could ‘rival theirs in oddness.’

“I can go,” Tony offers, and is about to get up when Natasha says, “I should’ve told you sooner,” looking towards Steve now.

“I’m sorry,” she continues.

Steve frowns. “Nat, what does this have to do with me?”

As Tony’s busy turning over every scrap of information she’d told him, Natasha takes a very small breath and says, “It’s James. Bucky.”

Oh, shit. Tony stares at her, all the information reeling to a halt- how the fuck? Really, _how_?

Steve says, “What,” in the tone of a guy who hasn’t fully registered the news yet, and Tony looks over at him because if Tony’s stunned, there’s no telling what Steve is feeling.

“He’s alive.”

“He’s alive,” Steve repeats back at her. “He’s- _how_.”

 “He was cryogenically frozen. He’s been like this on and off since he was presumed dead in the 40s. When he’s on a mission, he’s allowed to sleep. A real sleep. And when that happens, we can see each other in our dreams again.”

Natasha’s throat clicks. “I saw him last night. He’s somewhere in the country.”

“He’s on a mission?”

“Yes. For the people that raised-” Natasha closes her eyes. “For the KGB. He’s been brainwashed for- for a while.”

“Does-” Steve wets his lips. His eyes are overly shiny. “Is he-”

While Tony’s wondering if he should take his hand, Steve switches to Cap mode in front of his eyes: he draws in a deep breath, straightens his shoulders and smooths out his expression. When he looks at Natasha this time, his eyes are dry and focused.

“Tell me everything. Everything that could be useful in finding him first, and then everything you know about what- happened to him, how we can fix it. Jarvis, prep the quinjet.”

Jarvis’ voice comes neatly through the ceiling: “Of course, Captain.”

Tony whips out his phone. “I’ll start trying to find him,” Tony says, pushing himself up and heading for the hall- he has that facial recognition system, he can hack into the KGB database-

He pushes all of this to the back- maybe the middle- of his mind to ask, “Nat, any clues?”

“A city,” Natasha says. “Nothing else.”

“Well, better than nothing. Hey-” He stops before entering the hall, pointing his phone at Steve, who is now also standing and looks ready to march into battle. “We need time to prepare, a few hours at most, we aren’t just running off half-cocked, we don’t even have a location yet.”

Steve, maddeningly, looks like he’s going to argue. His mouth opens, but then his jaw clicks shut and he gives a curt nod, like Tony’s a solider in the field or something.

Tony nods back and heads down to the workshop.

Bucky fucking Barnes. Holy shit.

 

 

 

 

 

  


 

Natasha is quiet as the quinjet streaks through the sky hours later. She’s purposely taken a seat far away from everyone else and her gaze stays trained on the wall.

She doesn’t react when Tony sits next to her.

Tony waits. When she stays the same as ever, he says, “Yours is weirder.”

Natasha says, “What,” and the only movement comes from her mouth.

“Your soulmate situation. It’s way weirder than me and Steve’s.”

That earns him an eyebrow twitch. “I don’t know about that.”

“You knew him in real life as an adult even when you were both kids meeting in your dreams,” Tony says, and then pauses. “Right? Was that how it-”

“Yes,” Natasha says, and Tony works it over in his head. He’d meant kids as in young teenagers, but-

“How old _were_ you?”

At first he doesn’t think she’ll reply. But after a few seconds she says, “We were both twelve.”

So not the youngest, but still- very young. God. Tony tries not to let it show on his face as he parses it out- Bucky growing up in New York in the 30s and Natasha growing up in a KGB cell in the 90s. How the hell that worked, Tony doesn’t know.

“I learned not to tell anyone when I dreamed of him,” Natasha says. “That never… ended well.”

Tony winces. He can imagine.

“I’ve been digging through everything we can find on the Winter Solider,” Tony says, which is a name he’s become intimately familiar with in the last few hours. “There are some case files about you. You and him went rogue a few times before you broke out completely.”

Natasha’s lips are pressed together hard enough to go white.

Tony doesn’t pry any more than he already has. He sits and waits and feels the bumping of the quinjet as it rides out a wave of turbulence.

“I always meant to go back for him,” Natasha admits eventually. “Whenever I got close, the leads went cold.”

She looks away from the wall, finally, and glances over at Steve. Her gaze lingers until Steve shifts his head the smallest amount and Natasha goes back to staring at the wall again.

“Steve will forgive you,” Tony says.

“I should’ve told him sooner.”

Tony doesn’t disagree, but he gets it. “He’ll understand. Once he gets over the whole-” he waves a hand vaguely. “The shock.”

Natasha hums in response. Tony watches the tight lines of her shoulders and reaches out to give her a light pat on the shoulder that he isn’t sure is entirely welcome- she doesn’t flinch but she doesn’t lean into it, she just sits there- and gets up to head over to Steve.

“How’re we doing,” Tony says.

Steve is staring out the front screen of the quinjet. It’s clouds and flashes of blue as far as the eye can see.

“We should touch down in another twenty minutes,” Steve says. “How’re you doing on tracking?”

“Still got his location. Mostly. We’ll find him,” Tony assures him when Steve’s eyebrows draw together. “Steve. We _will_ find him.”

Steve nods. For a moment it seems like he’s registered the sudden softness in Tony’s tone and wants to lean into him or maybe return Tony’s look, but his jaw stays stiff and professional as he goes back to staring out the front window.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Is this legal?”

“What?” Tony cocks his head to the side that the earpiece is in. “No.”

“Great. Good to know.”

“Chatter,” Steve snaps.

Tony holds in a sigh and keeps tapping through his phone, which is hacking into the city’s surveillance cameras and doing facial recognition to Bucky Barnes. They’d just had him, but he’s a slippery guy, as would anyone be if they got trained by the KG-fucking-B for however many years-

“Found him,” Tony says as the screen zeroes in to a man in a grey hoodie walking fast and hunched through a crowd. His gait is solid and his face is stoic but he’s holding his shoulders like he doesn’t want anyone to touch him as they pass. “Corner of Jermaine Street and Manning-”

“Got him,” Clint says in the earpiece.

Beside Tony, Bruce leans over slightly to see the phone screen. They’d decided not to let the Hulk out for this one unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Clint continues, “Orders?”

“Tranq him,” Steve says.

“Use about three times than you’d usually use,” comes Natasha’s voice over the comm.

Clint doesn’t even pause. “Gotcha. Okay, _three-two-one_ -”

Tony watches as the Winter Soldier jerks in the middle of the crowd crossing the street. He freezes for a millisecond, then whirls around towards where the shot came and hit him in the neck, one hand coming up to wrench them out: three tiny needles that the Soldier doesn’t even stare at, just throws away onto the sidewalk.

“I’m moving in,” Steve snaps.

Tony makes a mental note to have someone pick up the needles and as he thinks it, the Soldier starts swaying on the spot. People move around him, even jostle him, and the Soldier moves with the pushes and takes a few staggering steps before collapsing on the crosswalk, still moving sluggishly.

Steve appears on Tony’s phone screen, sprinting at the Soldier just as his head bounces against the concrete. He stoops and then stops, hands at the right places to sling the Solider over his shoulder if they were low enough to touch him.

“Cap,” Tony says. Steve’s facing away from the surveillance cameras so Tony can’t read him.

He does, however, hear it when Steve says in a voice that breaks on the last word, “Yeah, Buck, it’s me.”

Static over the comm. Tony would bet Natasha made a noise.

The crosswalk is starting to clear as the traffic lights turn orange. Tony clears his throat and says, “Gotta get him out of there quick, Cap.”

That snaps him into action. “Right,” Steve says, and he hoists the Soldier over one shoulder. Tony watches the man hang limp over Steve’s back. Whatever consciousness he’d been holding onto, it’s well gone now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tony doesn’t make it to the medbay before he runs into Steve, who is walking in the opposite direction.

“Hey,” Tony says. “You good? He’s still-?”

“He’s unconscious,” Steve nods. His jaw shifts from side to side and he makes a movement like he’s not sure whether to flinch away or not when Tony reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“He said-” Steve has to stop to clear his throat. “He knew my name. Said it all slurred, but it was my name. He knew my- he knew _me_.”

Then he gives this small, tremulous smile. As soon as it appears, Steve seems to gather himself and takes a thin breath out. When he inhales, he’s semi-collected again. “He had a metal arm.”

Tony makes a face. “Yeah. I didn’t mention that, did I?”

Steve shakes his head. “Give me the rest of the files.”

“Are you sure you want to-”

“Yes.” A muscle jumps in Steve’s jaw. “It wasn’t him. He- he did it, but whatever he did, he wasn’t in the right mind.”

“All right,” Tony says quietly. He brings up his phone. “I’ll send them to you now.”

“Thank you,” Steve says. It comes out clipped, like he’s talking to a SHIELD agent he doesn’t know too well. But then something shifts in his face and he reaches out hesitantly to grip Tony’s free hand.

“Thanks,” he repeats, softer this time, Steve showing through the mask he puts on to punch bad guys and pose for newsreels.

Tony wonders if there’s a WikiHow article on how to support a loved one who just got their best friend back from the dead. Maybe. There’s WikiHow articles for everything nowadays.

“No problem,” Tony says. “Here if you need me.”

“I know,” Steve says, and it produces even more of Steve from under the mask before he turns and walks into another room, presumably to read through the files without anyone to look at him while he does it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky still isn’t conscious by the time they get back to the Tower.

“We’re sure he’s fine, right,” Tony asks Jarvis discreetly as Bucky gets transported to Hulk’s containment facility. Neither Steve or Natasha had wanted to turn him into SHIELD, at least not at first.

“Body scans indicate nothing out of the ordinary that we didn’t already know about, Sir.”

“Right.” Tony eyes the guy’s arm as Steve arranges him on a bed Thor had dragged in here earlier. He badly wants to tinker inside it, but he guesses that now is the absolute worst time to ask to do so.

He figures he’ll ask Bucky later. Possibly _much_ later. How long does it take to untangle years of KGB brainwashing? He can’t exactly ask Natasha about it. Not right now, anyway.

Tony leans on the doorway as Steve tucks the blankets sloppily around Bucky’s body.

He’d recognized Steve. That has to be a good start.

“I think I’ll stay,” Steve says without looking behind him at Tony.

Tony looks towards Natasha, who is hovering a few feet behind Steve, well out of range. She keeps twitching like she wants to move closer but doesn’t dare.

“You can stay,” Steve says, and Natasha goes stiff. “He’s as much yours as he is mine.”

Tony, stupidly, has to pull up every memory he has of Steve insisting he loves Bucky in a platonic, brotherly way-

He pauses. Thinks of Rhodey, the fierce protectiveness that borders on possessiveness that pulls at both of them. The dedication and deep, long-won bond between them that has been running through them both for more than half of their lives.

Tony rearranges his stance in the doorway. Yeah, okay. He’ll learn to deal.

He can hear Natasha swallow from here. She asks, “Are you sure?”

“’Course,” Steve says. This time he does look back at her as he stands, wiping his hands on his pants. “He talked about you a lot. Some strange, beautiful girl in a bad situation who didn’t say much. He didn’t get to see you often, but he was sure he’d fall in love with you when he got to meet you. He was already halfway there when-”

He stops and looks down at Bucky’s slack face. Tony wonders if Bucky’s hair was ever that long when Steve knew him.

Steve’s shoulders shift. He meets Natasha’s eyes. “You can stay,” he repeats, and it’s more welcoming this time.

Natasha’s head dips in a short nod. She comes to sit in a chair, one of the several they’d dragged in before, and is careful to take a chair one over from the one Steve is closest to.

Steve walks past that chair and comes to sit in the one next to her, then leans forwards and braces his elbows on his knees.

Tony coughs. “Hey, so I’ll, uh- I have some stuff to sort out in the workshop.”

“Right,” Steve says, looking at him over his shoulder in a way that suggests he would get up, but-

“I’ll see you later,” Tony says.

“Right,” Steve says, and when he smiles it looks like an apology. Then, like an afterthought: “I love you.”

“I know,” Tony says, and even after the exhaustion of the day it puts a smile on his face. “Love you too, my delectable blueberry muffin.”

That, finally, gets something like light into Steve’s eyes, even if it only produces a quicksilver flash of a smile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tony blinks.

He’s standing on a roof. There are buildings ahead of him, around him, and the skyline is familiar enough that Tony thinks _okay, New York_ , but there’s enough about it that’s off that has him blinking again, harder.

How did he even get here? He’d been… he’d been in the workshop, and then-

A breeze threads through his hair and kisses his skin. It feels just like any breeze always has, which is to say it feels _real_.

Tony turns around before Steve finishes saying his name.

Steve is thin, as he always is in the dreams. He walks like he’s used to it. Sometimes, out in the waking world, he holds his thick body like he’s still figuring it out.

“Hey,” Tony says as Steve approaches. “We’re still on the same timeline, right? In these dreams?”

“Just got Bucky back?”

“That’s the one.”

“Then yeah,” Steve says, with a brittle smile.

Tony asks, “Where’re you?”

“Our bed.” Steve stops just close enough to touch, if Tony reached out. He pushes his baggy sleeves up his arms like they annoy him. “You fell asleep at the workbench again?”

“Not on purpose,” Tony says, thinking of Steve’s big arms around him- or maybe Tony’s arms around Steve, tonight. It’s been that kind of day. “I’ll be right up-”

Before Tony can try to bring himself out of the dream- he can do it when he has normal dreams, he might be able to do it here- Steve reaches out and grabs his arm.

“Wait, no- I’ve missed this. We don’t get it much anymore.”

“Because we get to see each other all the time,” Tony says, smiling bemusedly. “What, still can’t get enough? You have to have me in your sleep as well as in waking life?”

“We’re still making up for lost time.”

“Yeah.” Tony looks down at Steve’s fingers, which have stayed the same despite the change: broad and thick and long, despite the skinny wrists they’re attached to. They suited Steve before and they suit him now.

Tony thinks about asking after Bucky. If Steve’s asleep, it must mean Bucky is still unconscious, or that he’s in a position that Steve feels comfortable leaving him alone.

But Steve’s staring out at the long-gone skyline with such a faraway expression that makes Tony shelve it for another time.

“Do you miss it?”

Steve nods absently. His eyes track over the tops of buildings, none of which are as tall as half of the skyscrapers Tony is used to.

“I’d give it all up again if I got you,” Steve adds, just as distractedly, like it’s an afterthought, a fact of life.

Tony has to close his eyes against the swell of emotions. He makes his smile stable and says, “You’ve got me.”

“Yeah. I do.” Steve looks over at him and mirrors his smile, a little broken around the edges but there nonetheless.

When Tony tugs him in, Steve clings to him as hard as his skinny arms allow. Tony hugs back just as hard, feeling the cheap material of Steve’s too-large clothes around his frame. He’s seen these clothes in the dreams before. In reality, they probably fell apart decades before Tony was even born.

They stand there for a long time, holding each other. The breeze keeps licking warm lines over them, ruffling their hair and clothes, and Tony spares a fleeting thought to whoever or whatever the hell allowed for him to have this, Steve, in his life.

After a while, Tony leans back and presses his lips to Steve’s cheek. “I’m gonna wake up and come to bed.”

“Good.” Steve kisses him and his grip on Tony’s face is a little desperate. “I’ll be here.”

“See you soon,” Tony says, and blinks himself awake.

 

 

 

 

 

After Tony unsticks himself from his workbench- literally, he’d been drooling in the short time he’d been asleep- he jogs upstairs to his room. His and Steve’s room. _Their_ room.

He shucks out of his clothes, leaving nothing but his boxers on as he makes his way to the bed.

Steve stirs when Tony slides under the covers. “Mmmhey,” Steve says sleepily, turning obligingly towards Tony and kissing his chin.

Tony scoots close and circles him in his arms and Steve butts his forehead gently into Tony’s chin. “Fast,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, you just seemed so excited to see me,” Tony says dryly. “Glad it kept up.”

Steve laughs. He leans in and presses a kiss to Tony’s neck, then to his chest, just beside the arc reactor. “Sorry. Just- tired.”

“No, yeah, I know.” Tony strokes a hand down Steve’s side. “You’ve had a hard day.”

Steve stays quiet at that. Hopefully he doesn’t think Tony’s coddling him. Steve hates being coddled. But all he does it cuddle deeper into Tony, so Tony doesn’t think he’s upset at him.

As Tony rests his chin against the top of Steve’s head, he wonders if some of the thrill is gone, if they’re finally getting used to having each other as a constant. It’s still great to see Steve enter a room, but Tony doesn’t get the overwhelming _oh god he’s still here_ relief that had plagued him in the first few weeks. Or, he does, but only on occasion.

It fills Tony with a strange kind of comfort. The idea that they’ll become so used to each other that having the other there is just taken for granted is… not really something Tony’s had with anyone in his life, ever. Rhodey and Pepper have come close, but they’ve mostly stayed in the office or the lounge and sometimes the workshop. Tony’s never come to bed and had someone there to sleep with, always, someone who might not be in bed the next morning but will always be around the Tower if Tony goes looking.

And if Steve starts going on missions, if Tony stops putting off the international meetings- then they’ll deal with it and expect with absolute certainty that they’ll come back to each other soon.

The idea is an immense comfort. They’re not quite there yet, but they’re getting closer.

As Tony’s eyes drift shut, Steve says, “Bucky woke up.”

Tony’s eyes snap back open. “Yeah?”

Steve nods into his chest. “It took a while this time, but he recognized us. Both of us. He was- confused, and I think he assumed he was gonna get punished if he kept talking to us. I don’t think he believed us when we told him he’s not going back there.”

Tony keeps silent. He can’t imagine the fucked up shit that’s happened to the guy’s mind. Tony probably wouldn’t believe anyone either.

“His memory’s really fragmented,” Steve continues. “Uh. He remembered some specifics, but only when we prompted him. And he got stressed really easily, but then- Nat calmed him down. Or, it was more like- they had an understanding. They brought each other back to themselves and it was just his turn.”

He turns his face into the mattress for the next part, wedged between the sheets and Tony’s chest, and Tony wonders if the arc reactor light is shining through his eyelids. It must be.

“It really showed. The years they’ve had together, I mean- in the dreams and out. They know each other really well. I read up on the times they escaped together- he got out once in the fifties, then not until Natasha was around. Then they broke out together when she was 16. I think she more or less got caught up in the crossfire for that. And then it was a two-person effort when she was 19, and again at 20, and at 22 she broke him out herself while he was still under programming. She got him out of the programming afterwards.”

“So she could do it again now,” Tony says.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Maybe.”

He’s quiet long enough that Tony thinks he might have gone to sleep. Tony’s halfway there himself when Steve says, “It’s still him, though. All the same- nervous tics and quirks. It’s like they just stripped some things away to put other things in.”

After this, he lapses into silence. When Tony starts falling asleep again, nothing stops him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day he runs into Natasha.

That is to say, she appears out of thin air in a way she isn’t supposed to do except for Halloween and when it’s absolutely necessary for something hilarious.

As Tony gets his nerves back under control, Natasha looks at him apologetically.

“It won’t happen again,” she says. “I just- forgot.”

“It’s fine,” Tony says. “Just- don’t tell anyone I screamed so high.”

“I won’t,” she says, and her mouth doesn’t even twitch.

“What’s up?”

She shifts on the spot. She looks, Tony finds, almost _young_. “James’ arm is giving him grief. I told him you could fix it.”

“Is he okay with me looking at it?” Tony wouldn’t blame the guy for being, y’know, untrusting. Tony doesn’t let anyone near the arc reactor unless they absolutely have to, and only if it’s someone he-

“I told him it was someone I trusted. He knows how much that takes. He’d be fine with you examining it.”

Tony blinks. He can’t quite stop the pleased smile. “Yeah? Okay, then. Uh, I have something to finish up but if he comes down to the workshop innnn-”

He checks his watch. “Shit. Two hours? How much pain is he in?”

“Nothing he can’t handle.”

Tony keeps the smile on. “Natasha. I’ve seen you walk off a broken arm. I fully believe someone who underwent the same training as you could have his arm burning off and still say it’s fine.”

Natasha cocks her head so infinitesimally that Tony nearly misses it.

“Two hours is fine,” she says. “We’ll see you then.”

Tony nods. “Make some noise when you two come in.”

“If we remember.”

Tony snorts and heads down to the workshop. Two hours. He can totally do this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When a knocking startles him out of his tunnel-vision towards his latest project, he whirls towards the sound. At first he’s just annoyed, but then he catches sight of Natasha and Bucky standing awkwardly outside the workshop like they’re not sure if they’re allowed in and Tony remembers oh, right.

“Two hours,” Tony says. “I did say two hours.”

He turns off the soldering iron and starts stripping off his gloves.

“I can go,” the man says. His voice is low and rusty, like it hasn’t been used in a while. He’s also holding his metal arm stiffly at his side like he’s trying his best not to have it move in any way.

Tony zeroes in on it. “No, it’s fine. Come over here,” he says, and drags a stool over to the couch, pointing until Bucky sits down cautiously on the couch.

Tony takes the stool. He reaches for the metal arm, glancing up to Bucky’s face to check it’s okay and getting next to nothing. He probes gingerly at the metal, turning the arm gently.

Bucky hisses and the smallest flicker of a spark glints in the spaces between the metal of the shoulder, which shifts with Tony’s movements.

Tony hopes the eagerness stays out of his expression. The guy’s in pain, he doesn’t care what a cool piece of tech his arm is, he just wants it to quit hurting.

He looks towards Natasha. “If I poke around in it- I mean, does anything work like nerves?” Turning back to Bucky, he continues, “Or does it just hurt where your old nerves are? The nerves in what’s left of your arm.”

Bucky gives him an incredulous look that reminds him weirdly of Steve. But then it’s giving way to nervousness again, and Bucky clears his throat. “Uh. It just hurts in the arm- the flesh of it. The metal doesn’t feel anything- it, it gives feedback, I can _feel_ things in it, but it doesn’t hurt.”

“It gives _feedback_ ,” Tony repeats, fingers probing the smallest amount into the gaps in the metal when it shifts at his re-angling of the arm.

“Tony.”

“Yeah?” He looks up to see Natasha with a stern look, standing by the couch with her arms folded.

“Hey, I gotta figure out how it works before I fix it. They didn’t include anything about the design of this thing in the KGB records, I have to reverse-engineer this thing from scratch-”

“You don’t need to figure out everything,” Natasha says. “You just need to make it stop giving out shocks every time it grinds against a certain- muscle, would be the best way to put it.”

Tony looks longingly at the arm. Then he sighs. “J, take a scan.”

“In process, Sir.”

Bucky’s gaze darts around like he doesn’t want to get caught doing it.

“Don’t worry about it, that’s just my-”

“He knows,” Natasha says.

Bucky shifts on the spot. Under his breath, he says, “Can’t even see who’s talking.”

Tony pauses where he’s busy internally calculating the best way to open the arm up. “I mean. He doesn’t have a corporeal body, so you can’t actually-”

“I know,” Bucky says, at the same time Natasha says, “He knows.”

Tony looks between them both and decides it’d probably be better to look at the arm. He excuses himself to go and get an array of tools that fall on the tiny side, and when he gets back Bucky is as stiff as ever.

Tony says, “Feel free to relax anytime,” and then feels like the world’s biggest asshole. He doesn’t want to look up and see what Natasha thinks.

Bucky doesn’t respond. He stays still and silent as Tony opens up his arm and looks around, tweaks some things and gets Jarvis to read out the intricacies and finds some of them himself. Bucky doesn’t make any noise or movement unless his arm sparks, at which point his teeth will clench together and he’ll breathe very hard through his nose.

Tony takes care not to touch the parts where metal meets flesh. He hates it when doctors do that to the reactor and he doesn’t want to ask if Bucky feels the same about his arm.

When Bucky does speak again, it’s when Tony is finished fixing the fault and is doing his best not to ask to tinker in his arm some more.

Bucky flexes his arm, eyeing it cautiously. He curls and uncurls his fingers and shifts his arm so the metal plates dislocate and shift with it.

Then he throws Tony completely off course by saying, “You’re Steve’s soulmate, huh,” while he’s twitching each finger one by one.

“Uh.” Tony looks up at Natasha, who is looking at Bucky. “Yep. You remember much about-”

“No,” Bucky cuts him off. Then: “Bits and pieces. I remember…”

His gaze goes distant. Tony sits on the stool, legs slowly cramping, and trades another look with Natasha before Bucky speaks again.

It’s in a language Tony only recognizes because Natasha speaks it sometimes. Tony looks at her again and Natasha says quickly, “James, you’re speaking in Russian.”

Bucky blinks. Then something crosses his face that looks almost scared, panicked, and Natasha’s reaching for his shoulder before Bucky visibly swallows the emotions down.

“’S good that he found you, is all,” Bucky says, threads of panic still leftover in his voice. He gets up from the couch. He doesn’t shake Natasha’s hand off, but he does watch it drop off his shoulder when she removes it.

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky doesn’t slough into the Avengers seamlessly, or at all in the start.

The team is accepting even if most of them don’t know what to do with him, but Bucky doesn’t seem to know what to do with all these people around him who aren’t giving him orders. Sometimes he’ll start shaking and have to book it out of the kitchen during breakfast, so suffice to say he doesn’t attend the first few bi-monthly movie nights.

Tony isn’t very involved with the guy’s recovery- that’s mostly left to Steve and Natasha and the SHIELD psychologists, but he does hear about the progress. Sometimes he hears about the lack thereof. On those nights, Steve will crawl into bed beside Tony and press his face into his neck, or he’ll put off bed by going to the gym and then he’ll shy away from Tony if Tony reaches for him.

Tony understands. He says the wrong things sometimes- to Steve and otherwise. Once he even triggers Bucky into a panic attack where he shoves Tony against a wall and presses a butter knife to his throat, and as Tony chokes he realizes that yes, you can definitely kill someone with one of those if you press hard enough, but Thor is hauling Bucky off of him before he can even draw blood.

Bucky apologizes afterwards. Tony accepts it before Bucky is even finished, but he thinks it’s diminished slightly by how Tony’s hoarse from getting choked.

“We all have- episodes,” Tony tells him. “You’re just- really fucked up right now, we’ve all been there, trust me.”

Bucky makes a noise that could be a laugh. He’d started laughing sometime during the second week; Steve had been quietly excited about it.

“Yeah, you all say that.”

“We do?”

“Yeah.” Bucky folds his arms and pulls them tight across his body. “You and Bruce and Clint and Nat. Even Steve, though he worded it differently. And he turned it into a pep talk by accident.”

“He does that,” Tony says.

Bucky nods. It’s jerky, like some of his movements are- he alternates between cat-slick and someone learning how to move his limbs.

It’s strange to watch.

The change in Natasha is even stranger to watch. She’s still _her_ , still scarily competent and soft in equal measure, and he supposes that the reintroduction of Bucky just shows off more of her soft side. More of the person inside her, rather than the tool she had to hone herself into.

It grows more pronounced the more stable Bucky gets, but Natasha in love acts like anyone else in love. That’s what throws Tony off the most. It’s rare, but he’ll catch her smiling stupidly at Bucky and sometimes even off into space. She teases him and gets so involved when he teases back that she’ll act like there’s no one else in the room.

They’re not much for PDA- the most Tony ever catches them doing is kissing, and not heated kissing. When others are around it’s more comforting touches, I’m-right-here touches to remind the other that yes, they’re still sitting next to them.

Tony finds them on the couch, Bucky sitting stiffly if it’s a bad day or looser if it isn’t, and Natasha will sit with him and read a book, or hum in lilting Russian, or just sit and rest. She treats him with an open kind of comfort and trust that Tony hasn’t seen her use with anyone except for Clint and on some levels, the rest of the team. But with Bucky there’s a sort of reverence to it, something private and personal to the point that sometimes Tony has to look away when he catches the two of them sharing a look.

It’s- strange. Nice, but strange.

 

 

 

 

 

Tony is playing Mario Kart with Bruce in the communal lounge when Bucky walks in on his way to the kitchen. He’s carrying a bag that proclaims it’s from the farmer’s market, one of those handheld ones you can buy at a stall and use instead of plastic bags.

“Hey,” he says when he sees Tony and Bruce on the couch.

“Yep,” Tony says, and Bruce just mumbles something through his teeth and breathes heavily through his nose.

Tony eyes him. “Uh, hey, maybe we should stop for now.”

“I have it under control,” Bruce says. He swears as he gets blue-shelled and Tony sees a tinge of green flinch across his cheek.

Tony pauses the game and claps Bruce on the shoulder on the way to standing. “I’m gonna get you some of Nat’s calming tea.”

“Fine,” Bruce says. “The one I like, please.”

“No, I was going to get you the one that made you gag that one time, I thought it’d really help with the anger thing,” Tony says dryly.

Bruce huffs a laugh from the couch as Tony heads for the kitchen. He’s almost at the doorway when he hears Natasha say, “Where the hell were you?”

“…Farmer’s market,” comes Bucky’s voice, slightly bewildered. “I got some plums?”

“Plums.”

“Yeah. For jam. ‘Cause we were watching that documentary about preservatives which turned out to be not as hellishly boring as I thought it’d be, and I said to you that making jam looked kinda fun-”

“You slipped past Jarvis’ surveillance.”

“Yes? I do it for fun sometimes. Well, not fun- I like to keep myself sharp, y’know-”

“You just _disappeared_ , James.” Natasha’s voice goes low and hushed. “We didn’t- the KGB want you back, you’re an important asset, we still haven’t gone on any kind of mission to make it clear to them that you’re never going back with them. I thought they’d somehow gotten through the Tower’s defences, or-”

“Hey hey hey. Firstly, don’t say that too loud, you’ll hurt Jarvis’ feelings. Second- I’m right here. No one got me. No one recognized me, I wore a disguise-”

“A hoodie and sunglasses isn’t a disguise.”

“Seems to be the go-to for all of you guys and you’re way more famous than me.”

Tony leans against the doorway. From here, he can just about see a sliver of them both: Bucky with his metal hand around Natasha’s elbow, squeezing slightly. Natasha with her arms folded and her eyebrows pinched inwards, worry still carved into her features.

“I’m right here,” Bucky says, quieter this time, and Tony can’t help but think back to his last dreamshare with Steve, months ago now: _You’ve got me_.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Bucky continues. “No-one’s taking me away this time. No-one’s laying a finger on either of us. We’re staying put.”

Natasha’s lips twitch. “That’s uncharacteristically optimistic of you.”

“What are you on about? I’m a very optimistic guy.” Bucky’s hand reaches up to cup the side of Natasha’s face, his thumb grazing along her cheekbone, and Natasha leans into it as the dim lights of the kitchen make the hand glint.

Tony thinks back to the files he’d read, the ones where Bucky had killed people with his hands, but mainly that hand. He’d choked people to death with that hand, he’d used it to squeeze a trigger and pull people out of cars. He can put it through a windscreen or a window and not get any damage. It’s a battering ram attached to his body, the most lethal part of him. He’s used the fine motor functions to squeeze down on windpipes and now he’s using it to stroke a careful line down the side of Natasha’s face.

Natasha’s eyes drift shut as Bucky strokes. All of her- body, mind- is the most lethal part.

Tony backs up a good few steps and then is sure to make more noise than he had on the first time approaching the kitchen. When he clears the doorway, Natasha and Bucky have drawn apart, Bucky emptying a bag of plums into the fruit bowl and Natasha over by the teapot.

“Just grabbing Bruce his favourite,” Tony says as he comes to stand next to her where she’s picking out a tea from the rack. Then, glancing over at Bucky, “How was the farmer’s market?”

“Good. Got a bag. And plums.”

Tony lets Natasha take Bruce’s tea from him and steep it in a different cup to hers.

“Nice,” Tony says. “Mind if I grab one?”

Bucky looks down at the fruit bowl considering. “Sure. I got a couple for eating. Rest are going into a jam.”

“Very exciting,” Tony says, lifting a hand up to catch the plum that Bucky tosses at him. He’s halfway through it when Natasha says, “Okay,” and pushes Bruce’s tea over to him, because she has a _thing_ about how long particular tea should be steeped.

Tony heads out of the kitchen with his half-eaten plum and a cup of tea. He doesn’t look back into the kitchen, but he sees Natasha and Bucky move closer together like planets in orbit, Bucky with his phone out scrolling through jam recipes and Natasha with her teacup, sipping slow and tilting it towards Bucky when he looks consideringly into the cup.

 

 

 

 

 

One morning over breakfast, Natasha asks Tony if he and Steve still share dreams.

“Very rarely,” Tony replies through a mouthful of toast. It’s not squished, because Steve eventually gave in and started using the breadknife. “Why?”

Natasha shrugs. “I just wondered.”

“You miss it? Sharing dreams?”

“I suppose,” she says. She takes a long drink from her herbal tea. It’s orange, which means it’s one of the weird ones. Tony can smell it from here.

Steve sits down between them with his own toast. He’d done Tony’s first, because he’s ‘a gentleman,’ in Steve’s words.

“You’re a menace,” Tony tells him.

Steve bites into his toast. “Everyone likes their breakfast differently, Tony.”

“Yeah, but-” Tony looks sideways when Bucky sits down with Natasha. He’s breakfastless but is drinking from what smells like that orange tea. “Barnes, how did you put up with this guy’s toast habits for years? You guys lived together for a while, right? How didn’t you strangle him?”

Bucky looks at Steve’s toast, scanning over it for a few seconds. “Do you hate marmalade or something?”

“No- well, yes, that’s another thing- but _look_ at it. Look at how he’s spread it. It’s on maybe a third-”

“Two thirds,” Steve cuts in.

“That’s not better!” It’s a little better, but Tony is on a roll and doesn’t want to admit it. “Look, okay, there’s half an inch of bare toast around the sides. Do you just- not want all of it to taste good?”

“I thought you hated-”

“Marmalade, yeah, I do, but you like it, so what’s your _deal_ , Rogers?”

Steve takes another bite of toast. He even bites into the bare part of toast, not even getting any marmalade, because he’s a jerk. He does it all while staring Tony in the eyes.

Then he says, “Bucky likes to sugar his eggs.”

“Bu- what?” Tony looks at Bucky, along with everyone else at the table. “What? You _what_?”  
  
Bucky has paused in mid-sip. He lowers his cup. “Shut it,” he tells Steve.

“ _Right_ ,” Natasha says, lapsing into a grin that Tony has seen on her maybe three times. “Sugar. On _eggs_.”

“Something’s wrong with that boy,” Steve says, shaking his head.

“Hey,” Bucky starts. “That was- my Ma did that to my eggs when I was a kid and I ended up liking it! It’s an _acquired taste_ -”

“What the fuck was wrong with your mom,” Tony says.

“Oi, don’t you rag on my Ma-”

“And he has to put his socks on right-foot left-foot and refuses to do it any other way,” Natasha talks over him.

Steve chokes on a laugh. “I forgot about that! He was so stuck on that, one time when I was 12 I brought it up and he got so mad-”

“ _Oi_ ,” Bucky says again, this time at the two of them. “Come on, guys, what is this, be a dick to Bucky day?”

“Nah, that’s in February,” Steve says. Then he jolts slightly and glares at Bucky. “Ow. Kick me under the table, what are you, nine?”

“Babies,” Natasha says.

Bucky rolls his eyes and starts to say something, but shuts up when Natasha kisses him on the mouth long enough that Bucky’s eyes flutter shut.

Steve takes another bite of toast. “Puttin’ me off my breakfast, guys.”

“Your terrible buttering skills are putting me off mine,” Tony says, and then leans across the table towards him. “I’ve mentioned that I love it when you get all Brooklyn on me, right?”

Steve swallows his mouthful of toast. “Might’ve mentioned it, yeah.”

Tony grins just Bruce, who had apparently walked into the kitchen during the middle of this, says, “It is too early for all of this flirting, please go away if you want to do that, this is a _communal area_.”

“Sorry, Bruce,” Natasha says as she draws back. “We promise to keep it PG.”

“PG-13,” Tony agrees.

Across the table, Bucky snickers. He picks up his tea and takes another sip, then wrinkles his nose and turns to Natasha. “We still have that green one?”

“We do.”

“Great,” Bucky says, and as he gets up Tony watches him and remembers his first week at the Tower when he’d been confused about having the option to control his own water temperature during a shower.

 

  


 

 

The weather gets hotter and for some reason Clint decides that this means they should have a Frisbee game on the roof of the Tower. Tony doesn’t ask him for the logic on that, mostly because he wants to see how hilarious it’ll be. Frisbee on the roof of a skyscraper sounds doomed from the start and Tony is definitely getting some footage out of it.

He plays one game against Thor and then goes over to the deck chairs they had lugged up to the roof. He lies down in one and watches the rest of them play. They’re currently losing at least one Frisbee every five minutes when someone doesn’t catch it and it glides over the side of the Tower and down into New York, but they’ve brought a lot of spares.

Tony adjusts himself in the chair so he’s more comfortable, and he’s about to close his eyes against the last rays of the sun when Natasha sits down on the deck chair next to him.

“How many so far,” Tony asks.

“We’ve still got at least ten left,” Natasha replies. She stays sitting instead of lying down fully, and when Tony looks over at her he finds her watching Bucky, who is versing Thor. Neither of them have lost a Frisbee over the side yet.

“I can’t believe Steve’s already lost two,” Tony says. “I mean, his day job involves catching a big metal Frisbee. He’s a shame to the nation if he can’t catch a couple of actual Frisbees.”

Natasha hums. The breeze catches her hair so it shifts in front of her eyes and she raises a hand to tuck her hair behind her ear.

“He won’t vanish if you take your eyes off him,” Tony says.

Natasha watches for a while longer. Then she says, “Do you believe that? About Steve?”

Tony shrugs and his shoulders drag against the wood of the deck chair. “I try to. And I do, mostly. But there are times when I get Jarvis to bring up the cameras or I look over to him or I text him, just to check. It’ll go away.”

“With time.”

“Yep.” Tony pops the ‘p.’ “Which we have, now.”

“Yes.” Natasha’s mouth lifts in a smile. “If they come for him, they will have to get through all of us.”

“Fuck yes.”

Tony watches a smile curve further up her face. With the sunset glowing beside her, it looks like she’s being lit on fire from within, and he knows how she feels: how hard-won all of it seems, how she can’t bring herself to believe it even with him right in front of her.

The future, the impossibility of its new and shifting paths and the look in her eyes that means she’s starting to picture Bucky with her ten, twenty years down the line. After a lifetime of just missing each other, then getting each other for a short time only to have each other ripped away, Natasha finally has her soulmate and she’s keeping him.

Tony’s gaze returns to Steve. He’s ragging on Thor good-naturedly, and Tony feels his own mouth lift as Steve’s own opens in a laugh, looking more carefree than he often gets to be.  
  
The evening is warm and the last rays of the sun haven’t yet left the roof of Avengers Tower. They’ll go inside soon, because there are movies to watch and snacks to eat, but those will keep.

They’ll go inside soon, but for now Tony leans back in his chair and folds his arms behind his head.

They have time.

**Author's Note:**

> here's my [tumblr](http://theappleppielifestyle.tumblr.com/).


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